In 1982—well before DNA was routinely used in forensic cases—the Victoria Police in Australia made a crucial decision. The agency began freezing biological material discovered at crime scenes, anticipating a time when technology would allow those DNA stains to be used to resolve open cases.

Today, DNA evidence has become a critical component in investigations worldwide, allowing law enforcement to scrutinize the tiniest shreds of evidence to link offenders to crimes or exonerate individuals wrongly associated with criminal activity. However, it wasn’t until the introduction of probabilistic genotyping (PG) software nearly a decade ago, that DNA analysis truly began to fulfill its promise.